Google Assistant has been the most used voice assistant on Android phones and it is now gaining new generative AI capabilities as Google has integrated it with Bard. Generative AI is the future and Google is betting big on it. The announcement comes just eight months after Google launched Bard.
We predicted that Google would make such a move around six months back. Google announced the development via a blog post, where the company is dubbing the new assistant as “Assistant with Bard”. It will be a personal assistant powered by generative AI. It combines Bard’s generative and reasoning capabilities with Assistant’s personalized help.
Once rolled out, people will be able to interact with it through text, voice or images — and it can even help take actions for you. In the coming months, users will be able to access it on Android and iOS mobile devices. “We’re building Assistant with Bard to be a more personalised helper that’s integrated with some of the Google services you already use, like Gmail and Docs — making it even easier to stay on top of the most important things in your life”, said Google.
Android users will get an advanced set of features, such as the ability for Assistant with Bard to create a caption just by analysing the photo. Assistant with Bard will use the image as a visual cue, understand the context and help with what you need. This conversational overlay is a completely new way to interact with your phone. Further, just like Bard and Assistant, it’ll be built with your privacy in mind — ensuring that you can choose your individual privacy settings.
Google added that Assistant with Bard is still an early experiment. The company is rolling it out to early testers soon to get their feedback before bringing it to the public over the next few months.
This can be a major move in the world of voice assistants if pulled off correctly. Google Assistant competes with the likes of Bixby, Siri and Alexa out of which only Amazon has announced that it is working on Alexa’s new generative AI capabilities to make it more powerful and sound more human-like.
While Amazon hasn’t shared a specific release timeline, they’ve indicated plans for a free preview of the new Alexa for U.S. customers. From this point onwards, it is going to be a race between the two companies as to who will rollout the new AI voice assistant first. After that, it would depend on which one would work better. But with Google stepping into the field, one can assume that the move is going to be a significant one, which would also force other companies to do the same.